Chapter 117

A crater of molten rock under a smoky pink sky. On its rim, the Melters' platform: the steaming cauldron, the crucible, and the little black pistol hanging on its chain over the lava. Forge-folk line the slopes in silence, made to watch.

on the platform, watch in hand, one bare hand and one gauntlet.

A Melter unhooks the chain and swings the black pistol out over the crucible, a pot of white-hot molten metal, and starts to lower it.

From the crater's rim, a firework: a whistling rocket that bursts gold-and-crimson right over the platform, BOOM, and every Melter flinches.

The crew stands in a line against the sunrise: Vigolas in his clinking coat, Smurjan with three shadows side by side, Rougeina with eight blades, Kali one-armed, Drekk in his bell-rope mask, Malm with sleeves rolled, Trollmage asleep against a rock. And in front, Kompis: Ivar across his back, Tyst in his hands, Fru Gnista smoking in his belt, Mingus at his heel.

The crew pours down the crater slope into the Melters:

Vigolas: Emerald Knuckle, cauldron-poles snapping.

Smurjan: the Triple Pulse, three Melters down in one beat.

Rougeina: Moth-Swap, dropping from the sparks of the firework.

Malm, roaring, punches a cauldron clean off the platform into the lava.

Drekk carries the sleeping troll on one shoulder and swings the axe with the other.

Kompis runs for the platform. Slagg lifts quenched Lilla Ulv off the chain and fires, a plain grey bullet, perfect and soulless, and Kompis Subticks around it, nose bleeding.

calling at the top of his lungs.

in Slagg's hand. Nothing. The oil holds. Deep under it, in Kompis's gold sight, the faint covered candle-flame of a cub flickers. Not enough.

again, louder, voice cracking.

aiming again, calm.

rising out of the rifle on Kompis's back, huge, solid, his moustache bristling, and furious as a storm.

turning his head.

Ivar's ghost steps forward past Kompis's shoulder: an old hunter in a ghostly coat, the size of a man and then bigger, and he fills his lungs.

roaring, every line of his face furious and full of love:

Under the oil, the candle-flame jumps.

The wolf cub, curled small at the bottom of black liquid, asleep. Her ears twitch. One eye cracks open. Far above, through the black, a gruff old voice she has only ever heard once, through a wooden box, and yelling about the weather:

eyes snapping wide open, ears straight up. And she wants to go to that voice so badly that she starts swimming up.

holding her, laughing and crying.

folding his arms, clearing his throat, gruff.

on the platform, holding his bitten hand, staring at it. Pain. A little. For the first time in decades, a sting.

Slagg recovers, plunges his one gauntlet into the cauldron of oil, and hurls a wave of black oil at Kompis and all four of his guns at once.

Mingus pressed against him, the golden pulse line roaring, eyes grey. Subtick. Four guns. Four lines. A thousand versions each.

The world snaps back into colour and Kompis fires all four:

Ivar, a bear-roar of a shot straight through the centre of the oil-wave, splitting it.

Lilla Ulv, a wolf cub bounding through the gap and off the cauldron and back.

Fru Gnista, a firework bursting in the oil and burning it in mid-air.

Tyst, a silent shot nobody hears, straight to the cauldron's chain.

The cauldron tips. A flood of black oil pours off the platform. Most goes into the lava, HISSSS, but a great black wave splashes back over Slagg himself, drenching him head to toe.

oil running down his face, eyes flat, and then not flat. The oil he quenched himself with, all those years ago, is the same oil. And oil that touches a quenched soul a second time, after a pup has bitten through it, lifts.

and something floods into them: every weapon he ever quenched, every soul he silenced, every scream he didn't hear. All at once.

Slagg on his knees on the oil-slick platform over the lava, both hands over his face, screaming, a man feeling everything he has done for forty years in a single second. The forge-folk on the slopes stand up. Malm stares.